Paddy was breezing on. “And when you got out of the service after the war, I’ll bet the Chinese Theater was one of the first places you went. Hell, it was probably one of the things you’d been fighting for.”
“So what if it was?” I asked politely.
“So, in all those visits you made, real and imaginary, did you ever happen to see a slab belonging to the great Greta Garbo?”
“No,” I said. “There isn’t one. That kind of stunt was beneath Garbo’s dignity.”
Paddy beamed at me. “The guy who said a person’s education never really ends must have had your picture on his desk.”
2.
Grauman’s Chinese Theatre looked like the MGM set department’s idea of a chop suey house, with its jade green pagoda roof, red pillars, and its dragons, large and small. Grauman’s warehouse, on the other hand, was strictly out of Omaha, Nebraska, its facade lacking any decorations whatsoever, unless you counted the oversize garage doors. The walls were poured concrete, naturally. Grauman’s used so much of the stuff, they probably got a discount. I wondered if the workmen who’d built the place had signed their names before it dried.
The pedestrian entrance had a doorbell, but Paddy tried the knob first. It turned in his hand, and we waltzed on in. The first thing we came to was a giant gorilla’s foot, cut off at the ankle and big enough inside for Paddy to use it as a bathtub.
“Forgot they did the King Kong premiere,” he said as we circled the prop. “That was a night.”
Beyond the foot were racks holding scenery flats and enough spotlights for a chain of theaters. Four very special lights came next, the giant, wheeled searchlights Grauman’s used to light up the night sky during big events.
Paddy kicked the nearest searchlight’s tire and said, “If the Japanese bombers had made it over here, old Sid Grauman would have been ready for them.”
We heard voices and saw a trio of men standing in a sunny square beneath a skylight. One of them saw us back and hurried to meet us, a very thin man with sunken cheeks, big sad eyes, and wavy hair that looked like it had been pulled at recently.
“Thank you for coming so quickly,” he said, sounding as sincere as the greeter at a funeral parlor. “I’m Frank Findley, vice president of public relations. The police are still here—” he gestured toward the men he’d just left “—so maybe you’d like to wait outside.”
“The police are old friends of ours,” Paddy assured him. “We’ve helped them out any number of times. Before we join them, why don’t you tell my associate, Mr. Elliott, about what happened last night.”
Findley blinked. “You haven’t briefed him? I must say I’m surprised.”
Welcome to the club, I thought, though it had actually been years since I’d been surprised by Paddy’s managerial style.
“I wanted him to hear it from you,” the great man said. “I was afraid he’d start theorizing before he had all the data. That’s a big mistake in our business.”
“He keeps his cigars in a coal scuttle, too,” I told Findley, but the allusion sailed over his head.
He blinked again, focused on me, and began. “Last night someone broke in here and stole three concrete slabs we had in storage.”
“Three? I thought only two had been yanked when the box office was renovated.”
Findley was impressed. “Two of the slabs were ones we’d removed for those box-office repairs. They belonged to actresses of no consequence. The third was quite different.”
Paddy didn’t nudge me in the ribs, but I felt it anyway.
The theater representative cleared his throat. “Please understand that what I’m about to tell you is in the strictest confidence, Mr. Elliott. The third slab belonged to Miss Greta Garbo. It contained imprints of her hands and her signature. She made them in 1929, at the premiere of the film A Woman of Affairs. Shortly afterward, the slab was removed and put into storage here. It remained here until last night.”
“Removed why?” I asked.
“Miss Garbo requested it. She wasn’t pleased with the slab. I’ve heard several explanations. One was that she’d accidentally knelt in the cement while signing her name, leaving an imprint of her knees.”
“Years before Al Jolson thought of doing it,” Paddy observed.
“Er, yes. There certainly were impressions of her knees in our slab. I’ve seen them. So maybe she’d expected them to be smoothed over and was unhappy that they hadn’t been. Another story was that Miss Garbo was upset over comments made about the slab.” Findley checked for eavesdroppers. “She was known for having somewhat large feet. The wags supposedly said that she’d imprinted her knees because her feet wouldn’t fit. Things like that.
“Mr. Grauman,” Findley continued, reverently referring to Sid Grauman, the late theater owner Paddy had mentioned earlier, “made a deal with her. He agreed to remove and destroy the slab if she would come and do another one, without knees. She said she would. But she was already becoming shy and reclusive. She never fulfilled her part of the bargain.”
“Neither did Mr. Grauman,” I pointed out. “He didn’t destroy the slab.”
“No,” Findley admitted.
“Why didn’t he threaten to stick it back in?” Paddy asked, describing what might be called the Maguire approach. “That would have gotten her attention.”
“Mr. Grauman would never have threatened anyone. He held on to the slab for sentimental reasons.”
“How long does sentiment last around here?” I asked. “He’s been dead quite awhile.”
“Nine years,” Findley said for the record. “Obviously we retained the slab after Mr. Grauman’s death. There was always a chance that it could be restored without offending Miss Garbo. If she...”
“Stepped in front of a bus?” Paddy suggested.
Findley nodded guiltily. “After Miss Garbo passes on,” he said, sounding like a funeral director again, “the slab could be... rediscovered. That is, it could have been before last night. Now it may be gone forever. And all because of that television crew.”
“Television,” Paddy said, all but spitting for emphasis. “What good has ever come of that?”
3.
We were interrupted at that point by a police detective named Hughes, one of the pair who’d been hogging the square of sunlight. I’d recognized him as soon as we’d entered, and he’d recognized us. Even in a dimly lit warehouse, there was no mistaking Paddy. Hughes, a shorter than standard guy with a bony brow, may have been waiting for us to come over and pay our respects. We hadn’t, and he seemed a little hurt about it.
“Should have known you vultures would be circling the water hole,” he said pleasantly. Like a lot of us just then, he was watching too many Westerns.
“Nice to see you too, Detective,” Paddy said and offered him a cigar. He held it well down, underscoring Hughes’s lack of height.
Hughes ignored the cigar but not the slight. “This may actually be your kind of job, Maguire, though I would have expected your outfit to be on the other side of it, the taking side. Or on both, the taking side and the miraculously recovering side. Anyone ask you for an estimate in the last week or so for a lift-and-carry job?”
“I’ll check our phone log,” Paddy said. “In the meantime, Mr. Findley was about to tell us how word of the Garbo slab leaked out.”
Hughes’s kind remarks about Hollywood Security had made the public relations man even more nervous. He collected himself a little and said, “It was the television crew. It had to be. They came by here last week to do a story on the memorabilia stored here. The person from my office who set it up wasn’t familiar with the Garbo situation. The warehouse manager thought the visit had been cleared by upper management, which it hadn’t been. He showed the film crew back here.” Findley pointed to a stretch of floor currently occupied by nothing at all. “They saw and photographed the Garbo artifact.”